Wade from Vagabond Journey on the Radio

A couple weeks ago I found myself rattling off a theory about how media exposure often occurs: “Journalist tend to be word ticking robots who are so overworked that they just want to tick out their words as quickly possible. So they often just piggy back on the work of other journalists when searching for [...]

A couple weeks ago I found myself rattling off a theory about how media exposure often occurs:

“Journalist tend to be word ticking robots who are so overworked that they just want to tick out their words as quickly possible. So they often just piggy back on the work of other journalists when searching for stories.”

So journalism works in the following way:

One aspiring cheetah runs fast and takes out an antelope, just to have the rest of the jungle creatures come out for a free meal: Somehow, a story, person, event, source is erected from obscurity and published in a paper, and then other media sources use this piece as a platform to base their stories off of. Like this, a lonely and laconic jerk can get a lot of press from a lot of different sources in a relatively short amount of time.

Each journalistic cheetah potentially feeds the jungle of their profession with each story they write . . . and are concurrently fed by all the other cheetahs. Journalism is a web of mutual aid and shortcuts.

But this was all just me pondering away, as I had no accurate bob with which to plumb the depths of these rambles. I write on the far flung periphery of journalism. I have published a dozen or so articles in print media, but the great bulk of my attention is paid towards writing online — multimedia, or backpack journalism — that I do 100% independently.

Then I received a phone call, and realized that I was correct in my assumptions.

—————
It was the beginning of June when I met Tom Helling. He was walking down the side of highway 1A with a 10′ high Jesus cross over his shoulder. He was fresh out on his first full day of walking across the USA — from Bangor, Maine to Mexico — with little more traveling equipment than the giant cross and an overflowing cup of faith. I wrote a story about this expedition, rightly called the “Cross Walk,” in the Featured Stories section of Vagabond Journey.com. At that time, this was another story that blended in well with the other articles that I have written . . .

Until something interesting began happening.

Local newspapers along Tom’s route began citing the piece that I wrote as a source for their stories. Statements such as “Wade Shepard from Vagabond Journey.com wrote . . .,” and “according to Vagabond Journey.com” began finding their ways into print. Other publications then jumped off of this platform, and, all of a sudden, I became some sort of journalistic authority, whose words could be cited with confidence.

Related

Wade Shepard is the founder and editor of Vagabond Journey. He has been traveling the world since 1999, through 83 countries. He is the author of the book, Ghost Cities of China, and contributes to Forbes, The Diplomat, the South China Morning Post, and other publications. Wade Shepard has written 3228 posts on Vagabond Journey. Contact the author.

Navigate

About

Wade Shepard is an itinerant writer who has been traveling the world since 1999, through 83 countries. He is the author of Ghost Cities of China, a regular contributor to Forbes, Citiscope, The Diplomat, and the South China Morning Post. This is his personal blog where he shares the stories from his travels that don’t fit in anywhere else.